NCJ Number
201905
Journal
Environment & Behavior Volume: 35 Issue: 5 Dated: September 2003 Pages: 621-636
Date Published
2003
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This article explores media depictions of the causes of road rage and, subsequently, makes recommendations regarding public policy about road rage prevention and enforcement.
Abstract
Road rage has quickly grown from a nuisance into a widespread social problem. Scant research is available about the etiology of road rage, and as such, law enforcement efforts to deal with the problem have not relied on research and evaluation of enforcement effectiveness. Formal social control efforts have typically been directed at problematic drivers as the preferred approach to prevention. The authors examined newspaper accounts of road rage because of the influence the media has on Americans and the widespread availability and readership of newspapers. All newspaper articles containing the words road rage or aggressive driving were analyzed from three major newspapers (The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, and Los Angeles Times) between May 2, 1985, and May 1, 1999. A total of 390 articles were analyzed and placed into 2 categories based on their stated explanation of the cause of the incident: human behavior/actions and structure of the environment. Results suggested that 71.9 percent of the incidents were attributed to human behavior while only 28.1 percent were attributed to environmental factors. As such, the authors suggest that a more nontraditional approach to prevention, namely prevention through environmental design which focuses on traffic facilitation, would be more effective at reducing road rage than the more popular crime control approach. Tables, references